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Oddly enough I've heard of location sound guys using CAT5 cable to carry analogue mic signals back to the sound recorder, largely because it's cheap and readily

Oddly enough I've heard of location sound guys using CAT5 cable to carry analogue mic signals back to the sound recorder, largely because it's cheap and readily available on location. Their impression was that it was basically fine, so long as you have decent transformers at each end. The audiophile folks would pass out cold if they ever learned about all the things that the signal goes through before it reaches their precious enclave...

KaiserPro 13y ago
Well its solid core, twisted pair(properly so) cheap and rated to 50Mhz. The main difference between expensive mic cables and cheap ones is the amount of string packed in to it to make it coil better. Most mic cable has a few tiny strands of copper flung together. More importantly they tend to carry a bit of capacitance, which means that when you run phantom power along it, it turns into a very dull microphone. (someone drops the cable there is an audible boing gernerated by the strands of the cable moving around.)
sz4kerto 13y ago
Using CAT5 as analogue cable is fine, it's a cheap, high-quality, low impedance cable. But this article is talking about TCP transmission, sadly enough :(
- oakwhiz 13y ago
  Well, let's see: The increase in latency and decrease in throughput of a TCP connection from a single (improbable) occurance of a corrupted packet on a modern LAN is negligible. Even if these audiophiles are streaming raw 192 kHz 32-bit 5.1 surround audio, that only seems to be about 37 Mbps. Any network audio streaming program worth its salt will buffer some number of samples to accommodate minor interruptions. So "magic" aside, you're probably not going to be getting packet loss with a "regular" cable. If a cable is good enough for Gigabit Ethernet, it's definitely good enough for your ears...
- radiowave 13y ago
  Right, though for a lot of audio guys it's a bit unnerving to be working with unshielded cable.
  - dfox 13y ago
    It's worth to note that with balanced signals, many problems (hum, some kinds of induced EMI...) that tend to be attributed by audio guys to poor shielding would not exist if there were no shielding at all.
mdisraeli 13y ago
One of my favourite apocryphal stories is the one of the audiophiles coming up to a company stand at a trade show, excited by the new bright orange cable attached to the speakers. The sales guy proclaimed it was a brand new product range they haven't announced yet. After the show, the sales guy went to the tech crew and asked about this new product that he'd never seen before. The tech crew replied that they forgot the speaker cable, so went down to home depot and wired up a $5 power extension cord

KaiserPro 13y ago

Well its solid core, twisted pair(properly so) cheap and rated to 50Mhz. The main difference between expensive mic cables and cheap ones is the amount of string packed in to it to make it coil better. Most mic cable has a few tiny strands of copper flung together. More importantly they tend to carry a bit of capacitance, which means that when you run phantom power along it, it turns into a very dull microphone. (someone drops the cable there is an audible boing gernerated by the strands of the cable moving around.)

sz4kerto 13y ago

Using CAT5 as analogue cable is fine, it's a cheap, high-quality, low impedance cable. But this article is talking about TCP transmission, sadly enough :(

oakwhiz 13y ago
Well, let's see: The increase in latency and decrease in throughput of a TCP connection from a single (improbable) occurance of a corrupted packet on a modern LAN is negligible. Even if these audiophiles are streaming raw 192 kHz 32-bit 5.1 surround audio, that only seems to be about 37 Mbps. Any network audio streaming program worth its salt will buffer some number of samples to accommodate minor interruptions. So "magic" aside, you're probably not going to be getting packet loss with a "regular" cable. If a cable is good enough for Gigabit Ethernet, it's definitely good enough for your ears...
radiowave 13y ago
Right, though for a lot of audio guys it's a bit unnerving to be working with unshielded cable.
- dfox 13y ago
  It's worth to note that with balanced signals, many problems (hum, some kinds of induced EMI...) that tend to be attributed by audio guys to poor shielding would not exist if there were no shielding at all.

mdisraeli 13y ago

One of my favourite apocryphal stories is the one of the audiophiles coming up to a company stand at a trade show, excited by the new bright orange cable attached to the speakers. The sales guy proclaimed it was a brand new product range they haven't announced yet. After the show, the sales guy went to the tech crew and asked about this new product that he'd never seen before. The tech crew replied that they forgot the speaker cable, so went down to home depot and wired up a $5 power extension cord